


Sweet Sorrow

by Nwar



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Past Drug Use, sad sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 19:51:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19933585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nwar/pseuds/Nwar
Summary: Sherlock reveals why he waited so long to take his trousers off for John.





	Sweet Sorrow

They were over the worst of it. The choked conversations, the British avoidance, the confessions shot through with fear of abandonment.   
They were through that sweet, nervous period that John would reluctantly admit he loved. The tentative touches, the kiss-and-check, pulling back to make sure that was okay and okay? Yeah, yes, good, John. Sometimes John thought about Sherlock excitedly realizing he could just wrap his arms around John and John would stand there and happily be held and smiled to himself.   
Now, however, they were at an impasse. John had experience with men, some, of course. Sherlock presumably did, too, based on how bloody well he handled John through his trousers, but he hadn’t disclosed much of his history.   
John had to admit that as much as he wanted to do the right thing and ask, this situation served him rather well. When they were both in an amorous mood, Sherlock simply took John in hand, or in his gorgeous, gorgeous mouth like a humble servant on his knees. Sherlock would finish in his own hand, tucking himself away as John lay in the afterglow, and John would be too muddled to care overmuch that he wasn’t really doing his part.   
But tonight, he was determined. John mouthed along Sherlock’s pale neck, his hand rubbing sweet friction up his outer thigh.   
“Oh, fuck, John,” Sherlock breathed, and John smiled until his shoulder, because he thought he’d never tire of hearing that noise in his life.   
“Love, please, let me touch you,” John said, biting into the crux of his neck, eliciting a sharp groan. Sherlock reached down and unfastened his trousers with schoolboy eagerness. John let out a chuckle, completely enamored.   
Sherlock pulled his flies wide and released his cock from his pants. John pushed his hand away immediately and started stroking him with his left hand, right hand now occupied cradling his skull to better lick deeply into his mouth. Sherlock’s gasp tasted so sweet in John’s mouth.   
Sherlock broke away to lean his head back into the couch cushions. “For God’s sake, John, you’re going to be the death of me.” He blew his breath out sharply at the ceiling, hips shifting under John’s attentions.   
“Still coherent? Hmm, I guess I’m not doing a good enough job,” John grinned wolfishly.   
“Surprisingly, this is one area in which you are exceedingly—Oh, fuck!” Sherlock’s rare compliment was cut off as John’s mouth closed around the head of his cock. John would’ve smiled with vindication, but his mouth was rather occupied.   
John’s neck quickly tired of the angle bent over his own legs on the couch, and since he was a very practical man, he moved to his knees in front of Sherlock on the couch. Sherlock was meanwhile gasping in rare brainless ecstasy, his back arched from pressing his head into the sofa. “John, John, John,” he babbled.   
John used his hand to take what his mouth couldn’t. He carefully covered his teeth with his lips and applied pressure along his shaft. He felt the side of his hand hitting Sherlock’s flies on every stroke, and he was quickly tiring of not being able to touch Sherlock’s skin through his trouser legs.   
“Budge up, lovely,” John said, swatting at Sherlock’s hips.   
Sherlock complied without thinking, lifting his bum off the sofa before his hands caught up to his brain and captured both of John’s wrists. John looked askance up at him.   
“You can’t take off my trousers.”   
“Why not, I want to get at your bollocks,” John said plainly.   
Sherlock looked away, and then met John’s eyes again. “I promise it wasn’t… I haven’t…”   
John looked thoroughly confused now, and Sherlock sighed with the knowledge of imminent loss of sexual contact. He lifted his hips and slid his trousers off entirely. How he kept trousers that tight and managed to get them off that quickly, John would never know.  
This idle thought was quickly interrupted when Sherlock spread his pale legs and revealed his inner thighs. Every vein had been tapped, track marks in shiny relief against his pale skin like swiss dots. There must be thirty, fifty even, little spots where Sherlock had succumbed to his demons and injected his drug of choice.   
Sherlock looked thoroughly discomfited. He didn’t meet John’s eyes, staring out the window into the dark Baker Street. “I wanted to wear short sleeves,” He sighed, and finally turned back to John, who was staring at him with a hard look. “And they… they would check my arms and stop there. They never even considered the many other entrances on the human body.”   
Slowly, and keeping Sherlock in his sights with a question in his eyes, John reached a single index finger to teach the darkest mark.   
Sherlock’s eyes closed, his entire face following the motion. “Infection.”   
But John wasn’t listening, he was running his hand further along the thigh, his other hand joining the exploration to push his thighs further open on the sofa. John looked up at him again to check, and then leaned down to press a heartbreakingly gentle kiss to the marks closest to his knee. Sherlock’s breath caught above him.   
John pressed more kisses to Sherlock’s legs, taking a moment to be stunned how incredibly beautiful he still was, marred by all this proof of imperfection. He reached the highest mark, maybe an inch from Sherlock’s briefs. He pressed a sucking kiss, teeth holding the flesh in his mouth. Sherlock gasped above him, and his hands flew to card through his short hair.   
John nosed along the barrier of his pants. “These off, too,” John said summarily.   
Sherlock lifted his hips again, helping John take them off, and John took him back in his mouth, now holding his balls and brushing his fingertips against his perineum. “John,” Sherlock groaned, voice rumbling with intense pleasure.   
John pressed wet kisses along the underside of his shaft and balls before wiping his mouth and moving up to kneel on the couch with one knee, caging Sherlock in with his body.   
He tilted Sherlock’s chin up to look him in the eyes. “I know they’re not recent,” John said, Sherlock’s body releasing a tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “I know you’d tell me if you ever—if that ever comes to you again.”   
Sherlock nodded violently, gaze fixed on John’s lips. “Of course, John.”  
John leaned down and captured his mouth in a bruising, passionate kiss. He poured every promise into it, trying to show Sherlock that as much as he accepted his past and loved him as he was, that he’d never let him fall into that hole again.   
When he pulled back, Sherlock’s eyes were wet, and John would bet that his were sparkling with unshed tears, too.   
“Alright,” John said raspily. He stood up, taking Sherlock’s hand and bringing him up, too. “Come to bed with me.”   
Sherlock smiled at his back as John turned to lead him into the bedroom, knowing he’d follow this man anywhere, because no one had ever loved him as he does. And what a strange, wonderful pain to be so loved and accepted. What sweet torture.


End file.
